To browse Academia. Focus on Students with Health Issues. As part of a larger interview-based study of the beliefs, practices and experiences of 16 proofreaders of student writing in a university setting, this article reports informants' conceptualisations of their role.
Although some informants did not identify with the proofreader-as-teacher metaphor, it turned out that proofreaders adopt a number of strategies to ensure their feedback is formative. The implications of the study are discussed, and further issues for research identified. This qualitative study draws upon questionnaire and interview-based data collected from 32 disciplinary lecturers, 34 English language tutors, and 56 students 24 undergraduates, 32 postgraduates; 29 L1, 27 L2 to explore participants' beliefs about the educative value of the proofreading of student writing.
No consensus emerged between or within parties, with a range of pro-and anti-educative views. Those who spoke of the educative value of proofreading claimed it was able to provide individualized learning opportunities, drawing learners' attention to knowledge gaps and recurrent errors, arming writers with learning strategies, raising their awareness of genre conventions, and pointing them to useful instructional materials.
However, those espousing anti-educative views claimed that, unlike writing centre tutoring, proofreading was not a pedagogic experience, and that student writers had little desire to learn from a proofreader, simply accepting all the changes the proofreader had made to their text and quickly submitting for assessment. Such a variety of views points to the difficulties of introducing an in-house educative proofreading policy.
The article concludes by exploring how educative proofreading could be embedded into university support services and its raison d'Γͺtre effectively disseminated to all stakeholders.
